contributions

By Kate Allen
The Guardian (UK)
In Osama, the new film from Afghanistan, women in blue burkas are shown demonstrating against Taliban repression before being cleared off the streets and banished back to their homes or taken to prison.
The film, which goes on to show a young girl disguising herself as a boy to earn money for her impoverished family, is notable for several reasons. Like the acclaimed Kandahar, whose Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf was also an uncredited prodcuer on (…)

By Frederick Sweet
Intervention
Combat veterans wounded in Iraq were left waiting weeks and even months for proper medical attention at military bases. According to an officer, their living conditions were so unacceptable for injured soldiers he said they "were being treated like dogs." Then the Pentagon underreported the number wounded.
The Bush administration, referring to veterans of the war in Iraq, told a House panel that they would avoid last year’s "mistakes" of leaving sick and (…)

Confédération Nationale du Travail >Syndicat de la communication, de la culture et du spectacle rp >Secteur Spectacle >33 rue des Vignoles >75020 Paris >spectacle.rp@cnt-f.org > > >Communiqué de presse > >Paris, le 27 février 2004 > >Hors de la lutte, point de " Coordination des intermittents et précaires d‚ >Ile-de-France " ! > >Après la signature de l’accord funeste du 26 juin 2003, les travailleurs du >spectacle entraient dans la lutte et s’organisaient spontanément en de >multiples (…)

By Jim Lobe
http://www.hipakistan.com/en/detail.php?newsId=en54969&F_catID=&f_type=source
WASHINGTON: For those still puzzling over the whys and wherefores of Washington’s invasion of Iraq 11 months ago, major new, but curiously unnoticed, clues were offered this week by two central players in the events leading up to the war.
Both clues tend to confirm growing suspicions that the Bush administration’s drive to war in Iraq had very little, if anything, to do with the dangers (…)

Strike hits banking, insurance sectors
By Aarti Dhar
http://www.thehindu.com/2004/02/25/stories/2004022504720100.htm
NEW DELHI, FEB. 24. An estimated 50 million people — including Government employees — observed a nationwide general strike today, demanding a review of the Supreme Court judgment on the right to strike and reversal of the Government’s economic policies.
While the strike was total in the Left-ruled States, it affected normal life in the rest of the country. The (…)

In the shadow of Sharon’s wall Israel must tear down its ring of concrete, razor wire and watchtowers around my town
By Marouf Zahran
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1153737, 00.html
My town and its people are slowly suffocating. The government of the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, is building a grotesque wall. He is building it on land that belongs to Palestinians: land occupied by Israel and held in violation of international law. He is building it, like a (…)

A MADRE Backgrounder on the Crisis in Haiti by Yifat Susskind, Associate Director
http://www.madre.org/country_haiti_crisis.html
A political crisis that has been brewing in Haiti since 2000 exploded during the second week of February 2004. Members of an armed movement seeking to overthrow Haiti’s President, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, went on a rampage in a dozen Haitian towns, killing more than 60 people. The towns remain under siege by criminal gangs led by former paramilitary members. (…)

by Stewart Acuff
www.dissidentvoice.org
First Published in Foreign Policy in Focus
"The boss said he would sell the company or burn it down before he would see a union at Sterling." To the cheers of a responsive Washington, DC audience on December 10, 2003, Sterling Laundry worker Evelyn Thomas vowed to continue the battle for the freedom to form a union at her workplace, in spite of fierce employer opposition.
Thomas’ tale was just one of the dozens of horror stories told by workers (…)

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - It is a virtual reflex for governments to plead security concerns when they undertake any controversial action, often as a pretext for something else. Careful scrutiny is always in order. Israel’s so-called security fence, which is the subject of hearings starting today at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, is a case in point.
Few would question Israel’s right to protect its citizens from terrorist attacks like the one yesterday, even to build a security (…)

Secret Report Warns of Rioting and Nuclear War; Threat to the World is Greater than Terrorism
By Mark Townsend and Paul Harris
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4864237-102275,00.html
Climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natural disasters..
A secret report, suppressed by US defense chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is (…)